This was meant to be Taco Bell’s big week: the triumphant arrival of the Waffle Taco, and the launch of a breakfast menu that, if all goes according to plan, will help the company double its revenues to $14 billion by the end of the decade.

Breakfast is a big deal for Taco Bell, because as CEO Greg Creed said on an analyst call in December, “we have a great business from lunch until you go to sleep at some crazy hour in the morning. What we don’t have is a business before lunch.” So the arrival of the Waffle Taco is also the arrival of Taco Bell into an entire segment of the day its stores have laid dormant.

So far, the launch has gone well, getting plenty of attention, although we’ll have to wait a little longer to find out how the sales are looking. But today McDonald’s came out with a move that could rain on the Waffle Taco parade. Via a company statement:

Wake up and taste the free coffee! McCafe invites coffee drinkers across the U.S. to stop by their local participating McDonald’s restaurant for a freshly brewed small McCafe coffee during McDonald’s first-ever national Free Coffee Event. Free McCafe coffee is available during breakfast hours starting March 31 through April 13 in participating restaurants.

McDonald’s has every motivation to keep its morning customers coming through the doors in the early weeks of a rival’s big launch: the chain gets an estimated 25% of its sales from breakfast.

For Taco Bell owner Yum Brands, the hours leading up to lunch are a quiet time for all three of its big franchises — the Tex-Mex chain’s corporate siblings Pizza Hut and KFC also both lacked morning options. When you think “what to eat at 8am?,” the answer is rarely “Pizza Hut,” unless you’re in China or maybe Indonesia.

But if Taco Bell can get breakfast right, at least one of the three Yum Brands chains will have a presence in the American morning. And Mr. Creed says Taco Bell will become a force to be reckoned with in the breakfast hours. Here he is on that same December conference call, according to a Capital IQ transcript:

So why are we going to win at breakfast? We’re going to win at breakfast for 3 reasons: We have the right products: A.M. Crunchwrap, Waffle Taco and Cinnabon Delights. We have the right pricing, both in an absolute pricing sense and in a competitive pricing sense. And then I believe we also have the right positioning, which is I say there will be breakfast envy.

Let it be known: “there will be breakfast envy” will be remembered as the rallying cry of the Great Breakfast War of 2014 (and could be the title of the P.T. Anderson epic film documenting the era). And the stirring counter-call from McDonald’s – ”Wake up and taste the free coffee!” — will sit alongside it in the history books. It is an exciting time to be a lover of breakfast.